Taken prisoner: Sarasota High alum endured torture and found faith in Vietnam

Sunday

May 26, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Guy Gruters spent five years as a POW after his plane was shot down. Forty years ago, he was set free.

By ELIZABETH JOHNSON

“Every day was a month. Every month was a year. Every year was a lifetime.”

That is how Guy Gruters describes the more than five years he spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

Four decades after his release, Gruters, a graduate of Sarasota High School, has retired to Ohio.

The uncle of Republican Party of Sarasota County Chairman Joe Gruters speaks across the country about the journey of his capture, finding God, and about how his brother became a hero.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of Gruters' release from North Vietnam.

‘A nightmare'

“When you woke up in the morning, it was like waking up into a nightmare.”

A fighter pilot with the rank of captain, Gruters was shot down twice in his second tour of Vietnam, in which he volunteered for a top-secret unit flying at low altitudes to scout enemy targets.

The first time, he was rescued.

A month later, on Dec. 20, 1967, the then-25-year-old was captured by North Vietnamese soldiers.

Gruters was stuck in a small concrete cell, shared with all manner of vermin. About 5:45 each morning, a Communist soldier would come to his door, dumping his bucket of waste. Prisoners were allowed a weekly wash.

He would be given a liter of water polluted with dead worms and small loaf of bread full of droppings and live bugs. He ate that meal twice a day for five years and three months.

Prisoners were given two sets of pajamas — no socks or shoes. In the summer, temperatures would soar. They would lie with their faces against the concrete floor, breathing in fresh air from cracks beneath the door.

In the winter, the mercury would drop into the 30s. Prisoners would be stripped and forced to kneel while guards drenched them with buckets of cold water.

“You were shivering all day and night,” Gruters said.

‘Absolute agony'

Russian and North Vietnamese soldiers tortured the prisoners regularly.

Gruters recalls a particularly excruciating position in which he would be bound “like a pretzel.” Ropes tied tightly around his elbows, cutting off his circulation, were bound together until the joints touched behind his back. “It dislocates one of your shoulders.”

Then Gruters' ankles were shackled with irons and positioned above his head. When the prisoners would scream, rags were stuffed in their mouths.

At first, the interrogative torture was twice a day. Then 10 times a week. Then two or three times a week.

But Gruters would not break. “We were trained to make it look like you're broken, then give them garbage.”

The prisoners developed a communication system, used to collaborate their stories and maintain sanity with human contact — even if it was through thick concrete.

“It was important to fight as a unit and handle it the same way,” he said. “We gave a united front.”

At first, the soldiers used Morse code, but dots and dashes do not translate well when tapped lightly on a concrete wall. The soldiers devised another tapping system. Replacing a K with a C, the prisoners made a 25-letter alphabet divided into five five-letter groups — ABCDE, FGHIJ, LMNOP, QRSTU, VWXYZ.

“I can tap any letter with two sets of taps,” Gruters explained: the first set would determine the group of five; the second, the letter within that group. “Ears against the walls, tapping lightly. One word like that all day.”

For the first two and a half years, Gruters was tapping back-and-forth with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz — “seven years my senior.

“A tremendous friend.”

Turning to God

When he wasn't tapping, Gruters was praying.

He had grown up an altar boy in a faithful Catholic family, but inside that prison cell he formed a true relationship with God — “the only way to get through it.”

Before being captured, Gruters thought of God in a big-picture sense. “I had no idea that he really does control every detail until prison camp. I saw his power. Prison camp was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Gruters attributes success in his marriage and raising his eight children to those years of meditation. He learned to never be vindictive or hold grudges.

“It took me many months of prayer to get over the hatred,” Gruters said. “Then I started praying to get them to heaven even though they were hurting us.”

For the last three years of his imprisonment, Gruters had peace.

“I wasn't worried because I knew he was in charge,” Gruters said. “If he wanted us out of there, we were going home. If we didn't go home, that's fine. He knows best.”

‘Bombed his brother out'

Gruters prayed for hours each day, and so did his family. His mother and aunt made a pact.

“They got together every day and prayed for him,” said his brother, Terry Gruters, Joe Gruters' father. “As far as I'm concerned, the prayers are probably why he got out.”

Terry Gruters, who graduated from Sarasota High in 1963, followed his older brother. He went to the Air Force Academy, graduating one year after news of his brother's capture. He completed 10 months of pilot training before taking “the assignment that would get me to Vietnam the quickest.”

On his third tour, Terry Gruters took part in a mission that led to his brother's release: Operation Linebacker II, more commonly referred to as the 11-Day War.

In the days surrounding Christmas 1972, Terry Gruters and others bombed the North Vietnam capital of Hanoi.

“By the 11th day, there was no more,” Terry Gruters said. “They gave up and said, ‘We're going to the peace table.' ”

By that point, Gruters had been transferred to his seventh and final camp — this one near Hanoi in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Once a month, a truck carrying rations for the 200 prisoners would travel to camp. A week after the truck left, prisoners heard shifting gears in the distance. The soldiers — no longer in solitary — were on one another's shoulders to look out a small vent.

Nineteen trucks arrived in three hours. The next day, the men were thrown in. On March 14, 1973, they were freed.

Eventually, they made their way to the Philippines. After a stop in Hawaii, Gruters was sent to Alabama, where he saw his parents, wife and children for the first time in more than five years.

“The real trauma is with the families,” said Terry Gruters, who waited until the next day to see his brother. Accustomed to the military, he knew to expect trouble.

Guy told him, “ ‘Terry, I'm doing what I believe in, so don't ever feel sorry for me,' ” Terry Gruters said. “That's not something you can say to your wife or mother, but you can say it to a fellow soldier.”

That preparation did not shield Terry Gruters from the shock of seeing his 6-foot-3 brother — 220 pounds when deployed. He weighed 150 pounds. “This guy, who was the picture of health five years earlier, looks like a corpse who's talking.”

Guy Gruters said seeing his family was “ecstasy.”

Although he took a long time to recover, Gruters was mostly unfazed. He did not notice the changes in the United States, because everything was so different from his time in prison.

“Free to live, work, worship, speak,” Gruters said. “It's like we came from hell to heaven.”

Gruters was later a pilot for Eastern Airlines and an international account representative for International Business Machines. He worked for Pearl Vision and McCrory Corp. He also joined his brother in PC Software Accounting, which Terry Gruters still operates in Southwest Florida.

Guy and Sandy Gruters, who Guy met on a blind date in Sarasota during time off from the Air Force Academy, had five more children and adopted another. They live on 10 acres in Sidney, Ohio.

Guy Gruters recently compiled his best 13 speeches for publication in “Locked Up With God.”

This week, he joined 200 of fellow prisoners at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California. It was on the 40th anniversary of March 24, 1973, when Nixon held a White House dinner after Operation Homecoming, in which 591 POWs were returned.

Asked if he would go through it all again, Gruters said, “Absolutely. You've got to fight the war that has to be fought. I'm very happy I got to fight.

“I'm very confident on Judgment Day that God will say it was a war worth fighting.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.